Phil Bradford and Regis McCafferty founded the Ohio Pipe Collectors
in 1993 with the goal of producing a newsletter and an annual show.
Regis edited four small newsletters (June, 1993, December, 1993, March,
1994 and June, 1994) and one show, in August, 1994. The club had pretty
good support from the local smoke shops.

At the end of 1994, Phil wished to step down as president, with Regis
moving up to the position. At that time, Bill Unger volunteered to
become secretary/treasurer and newsletter editor. Actually, the newsletter
was what he was interested in. Being a freelance editor/writer by profession,
he had written quite a few articles for various magazines. However,
magazine writing is a lot of work for very little money. Unger decided
that, if he were going to put a lot of energy into something without
much back in the way of income, he'd forego the income all together
and devote himself to something that really interested him. Hence the
newsletter.

At that time, the OPC had maybe 20 members or so. Unger realized that,
if he were going to put out something that made a difference and was
a lot more than the few pages that most clubs send out about meetings
and such, he needed to recruit a lot of members to pay for printing
and postage. So that was his first goal--get the word out about the
organization through every means possible (local shops and the appearance
of Steve Masticola's email Digest were a great help). This effort succeeded
and continues to succeed.

Then Regis, who worked in computers for American Electric Power, was
transferred from Columbus up to Bolivar in northern Ohio, and producing
the show fell onto Unger's shoulders. Had he but known, he might have
re-thought the whole thing, but he took on the job. His fears proved
groundless. We sold out all the tables that first year and have done
so or come close ever since. Moving our date up to August was a good
move. Our membership has grown, and we've made money on the show each
year. We have a comfortable bank account to keep publishing our newsletter
and to plan the shows without too much worry about going broke.

NASPC, which developed out of the OPC when our memberships in the U.S.
and Canada began to grow around 1997, and with the addition of John Tolle as president, is not a club, but an association, a society for like-minded pipe collectors.